A History of Science — Volume 5

by Henry Smith Williams; Edward Huntington Williams

In whatever capacity one sought him out, provided the seeking were not too presumptuous, one was sure to find the great savant approachable, courteous, even cordial. A man of multifarious affairs, he impressed one as having abundance of time for them all, and to spare. There is a leisureliness about the seeming habit of existence on the Continent that does not pertain in America, and one felt the flavor of it quite as much in the presence of this great worker as among those people who from our stand-point seem never really to work at all. This is to a certain extent explained if one visited Virchow in his home, and found to his astonishment that the world-renowned physician, statesman, pathologist, anthropologist was domiciled in a little apartment of the most modest equipment, up two flights, in a house of most unpretentious character. Everything was entirely respectable, altogether comfortable, to be sure; but it was a grade of living which a man of corresponding position in America could not hold to without finding himself quite out of step with his confrères and the subject of endless comment. But in this city of universal apartment-house occupancy and relatively low average of display in living it is quite otherwise. Virchow lived on the same plane, generally speaking, with the other scientists of Europe; it is only from the American standpoint that there is any seeming disparity between his fame and his material station in life; nor do I claim this as a merit of the American stand-point.

Be that as it may, however, our present concern lies not with these matters, but with Virchow the pathologist and teacher. To see the great scientist at his best in this rôle, it was necessary to visit the Institute of Pathology on a Thursday morning at the hour of nine. On the morning of our visit we found the students already assembled and gathered in clusters all about the room, examining specimens of morbid anatomy, under guidance of various laboratory assistants. This was to give them a general familiarity with the appearances of the disease-products that would be described to them in the ensuing lecture. But what is most striking about the room was the very unique method of arrangement of the desk or table on which the specimens rested. It was virtually a long-drawn-out series of desks winding back and forth throughout the entire room, but all united into one, so that a specimen passed along the table from end to end will make a zigzag tour of the room, passing finally before each person in the entire audience. To facilitate such transit, there was a little iron railway all along the centre of the table, with miniature turn-tables at the corners, along which microscopes, with adjusted specimens for examination, might be conveyed without danger of maladjustment or injury. This may seem a small detail, but it is really an important auxiliary in the teaching by demonstration with specimens for which this room was peculiarly intended. The ordinary lectures of Professor Virchow were held in a neighboring amphitheatre of conventional type.

Of a sudden there was a hush in the hum of voices, as a little, thin, frail-seeming man entered and stepped briskly to the front of the room and upon the low platform before the blackboard in the corner. A moment's pause for the students to take their places, and the lecturer, who of course was Virchow himself, began, in a clear, conversational voice, to discourse on the topic of the day, which chanced to be the formation of clots in blood-vessels. There was no particular attempt at oratory; rather the lecturer proceeded as if talking man to man, with no thought but to make his meaning perfectly clear. He began at once putting specimens in circulation, as supplied on his demand by his assistants from a rather grewsome-looking collection before him. Now he paused to chaff the assistant who was making the labels, poking good-humored jokes at his awkwardness, but with no trace of sting. Again he became animated, his voice raised a little, his speech more vehement, as he advanced his own views on some contested theory or refuted the objections that some opponent had urged against him, always, however, with a smile lurking about his eyes or openly showing on his lips.

Constantly the lecturer turned to the blackboard to illustrate with colored, crayons such points of his discourse as the actual specimens in circulation might leave obscure. Everything must be made plain to every hearer or he would not be satisfied. One can but contrast such teaching as this with the lectures of the average German professor, who seems not to concern himself in the least as to whether anything is understood by any one. But Virchow had the spirit of the true teacher. He had the air of loving his task, old story as it was to him. Most of his auditors were mere students, yet he appealed to them as earnestly as if they were associates and equals. He seemed to try to put himself on their level—to make his thought near to them. Physically he was near to them as he talked, the platform on which he stood being but a few inches in height, and such physical nearness conduces to a familiarity of discourse that is best fitted for placing lecturer and hearers en rapport. All in all, appealing as it does almost equally to ear and eye, it is a type of what a lecturer should be. Not a student there but went away with an added fund of information, which is far more than can be said of most of the lectures in a German university.

Needless to say, there are other departments to the Institute of Pathology. There are collections of beautifully preserved specimens for examination; rooms for practical experimentation in all phases of the subject, the chemical side included; but these are not very different from the similar departments of similar institutions everywhere. What was unique and characteristic about this institution was the personality of the director. Now he is gone, but his influence will not soon be forgotten. The pupils of a great teacher are sure to carry forward the work somewhat in the spirit of the master for at least a generation.

THE BERLIN INSTITUTE OP HYGIENE

I purposely refrain from entering into any details as to the character of the technical work done at the Virchow Institute, because the subject of pathology, despite its directly practical bearings, is in itself necessarily somewhat removed from the knowledge of the general reader. One cannot well understand the details of changes in tissues under abnormal conditions unless one first understands the normal conditions of the tissues themselves, and such knowledge is reserved for the special students of anatomy. For the nonprofessional observer the interest of the Virchow Institute must lie in its general scope rather than in the details of the subjects there brought under investigation, which latter have, indeed, of necessity, a somewhat grewsome character despite the beneficent results that spring from them. It is quite otherwise, however, with the work of the allied institution of which I now come to speak. The Institute of Hygiene deals with topics not very remote from those studied in the Virchow Institute, part of its work, indeed, falling clearly within the scope of pathology; but it differs in being clearly comprehensible to the general public and of immediate and tangible interest from the most strictly utilitarian stand-point, hygiene being, in effect, the tangible link between the more abstract medical sciences and the affairs of every-day life.

The Institute of Hygiene has also the interest that always attaches to association with a famous name, for it was here that Professor Koch made the greater part of those investigations which made his name the best known, next to that of Pasteur, of any in the field of bacteriology. In particular, the researches on the cholera germ, and those even more widely heralded researches that led to the discovery of the bacillus of tuberculosis, and the development of the remedy tuberculin, of which so much was at first expected, were made by Professor Koch in the laboratories of the antiquated building which was then and is still the seat of the Institute of Hygiene. More recently Professor Koch has severed his connection with the institution after presiding over it for many years, having now a semi-private laboratory just across from the Virchow Institute, in connection with the Charité Hospital; but one still thinks of the Institute of Hygiene as peculiarly the "Koch Institute" without injustice, so fully does its work follow the lines laid out for it by the great leader.

But however much the stamp of any individual personality may rest upon the institute, it is officially a department of the university, just as is the Virchow Institute. Like the latter, also, its local habitation is an antiquated building, strangely at variance, according to American ideas, with its reputation, though by no means noteworthy in this regard in the case of a German institution. It is situated in a part of the city distant from any other department of the university, and there is nothing about it exteriorly to distinguish it from other houses of the solid block in which it stands. Interiorly, it reminds one rather of a converted dwelling than a laboratory proper. Its rooms are well enough adapted to their purpose, but they give one the impression of a makeshift. The smallest American college would be ill-satisfied with such an equipment for any department of its work. Yet in these dingy quarters has been accomplished some of the best work in the new science of bacteriology that our century will have to boast.

The actual equipment of the bacteriological laboratory here is not, indeed, quite as meagre as it seems at first, there being numerous rooms, scattered here and there, which in the aggregate give opportunity for work to a large number of investigators, though no single room makes an impressive appearance. There is one room, however, large enough to give audience to a considerable class, and here lectures were given by Professor Koch and continue to be given by his successors to the special students of bacteriology who come from all over the world, as well as to the university students who take the course as a part of their regular medical curriculum. In regard to this feature of its work, the Institute of Hygiene differs in no essential respect from the Pasteur Institute and other laboratories of bacteriology. The same general routine of work pertains: the patient cultivation of the minute organisms in various mediums, their careful staining by special processes, and their investigation under the microscope mark the work of the bacteriologist everywhere. Many details of the special methods of culture or treatment originated here with Professor Koch, but such matters are never kept secret in science, so one may see them practised quite as generally and as efficiently in other laboratories as in this one. Indeed, it may frankly be admitted that, aside from its historical associations with the pioneer work in bacteriology, which will always make it memorable, there is nothing about the bacteriological laboratory here to give it distinction over hundreds of similar ones elsewhere; while in point of technical equipment, as already noted, it is remarkable rather for what it lacks than for what it presents.